Sign

.

All this talk of transcendence
aside
isn't it true that
as utilitarian commodity

poetry provides
a kind of colourful
billboard behind
which the actual

existential
landscape, with its dry
arroyos of misery
and its pocket

canyons of
distraction, remains
so carefully
hidden?

Paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1910)

Street scene at night, n.d.
Marcella, 1910 (Brücke Museum, Berlin)
Seated girl, 1910
Self-portrait as a patient, 1918 (Pinakothek der Moderne, München)
The Amselfluh, n.d.